Member Info for rcgl2

Thanks Italian, very interesting.

Rich3r - thanks for the info!

Don't know about you guys but webinars just leave me cold, especially if they are going to be used to disseminate information. I just don't have the time or the inclination really to sit there watching and listening to stuff like that. I want written communications that I can read at a convenient moment, and maybe skim over the fluff and get straight to the nitty gritty.

I'm sure they can be good for hammering home information that's already out there, doing a bit of a sales pitch (if you have the right presentation skills), but if Solg wants to communicate something new and exciting that could get the SP going I'd rather it not be in some rambling answer at minute 36.24 of an online webinar.

Chartist experts - what moving averages do you like to use in trying to get a decent idea of trend/price momentum? Simple or exponential? What periods? Weekly or daily charts? Do you use different combinations for different assets?

I'm not massively into charting myself but for my more speculative (not buy and hold forever) investments I try to have a look to gauge where the price seems to be going. From my rudimentary charting, Solg seemed to have been in a nice little uptrend, SP above MA20, above MA50, above MA200. However, fiddling around with the parameters a bit it does seem this might be in danger of dropping through the shorter term averages and we might be heading to lower 20s unless good news is forthcoming.

Any tips or thoughts welcome.

CGP has ramped up their Twitter activity this month. More tweets in August than most of the rest of the year so far. When you want to sell something, coming across as desperate for a sale isn't usually the best tactic.

If the bidder makes an approach to the target board about a potential takeover, absolute secrecy is required by the code. The bidder and target can negotiate. The target board may, but need not, make an announcement of the potential takeover approach. Such an announcement would then trigger a 28 day "put up or shut up" deadline for the bidder to clarify its intentions. An announcement would also be required under certain circumstances such as when there has been a leak, rumour and speculation, untoward movement in the target's share price, 30% mandatory bid trigger is met, or if the bidder notifies the target of its firm intention to make an offer.

Therefore I agree that if an approach has been been made about a potential takeover but no firm intention to make an offer has occurred, an announcement would not have been required, provided none of the triggers in 2.2. had occurred.

However, if any bidder had communicated a firm intention to bid for Solgold to the board, then an announcement would have been required. That would be irrespective of whether the offer was recommended (by the Solg board) or hostile (without board recommendation).

The discussion below seems to be based on the question of whether someone has already offered £1 a share for Solgold. If that was a firm intention to make such an offer, the Solg board would have had to announce it, irrespective of whether they supported the offer or did not support the offer. As I said before, the target board does not "accept or reject" the offer. They can recommend the shareholders accept it, or they can recommend the shareholders do not accept it. It is the shareholders who accept or reject.

By the way, a bid can be hostile from the outset. There is a requirement to notify the target board prior to making a public announcement, but this could occur immediately prior to the bidder publicly announcing its intention to make an offer.

Hopefully everyone can take away from that what they want... there may have been an approach that did not lead to a firm offer, which we may not know about, but if there had been a firm offer, we would have heard about it.

Quady. The Code is very clear. See section D 2.2:

2.2 WHEN AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS REQUIRED
An announcement is required:
(a) when a firm intention to make an offer is notified to the board of the offeree company by or on behalf of an offeror, irrespective of the attitude of the board to the offer;

Also, if you look at the General Principles at the start of the Code, item 3:

3. The board of an offeree company must act in the interests of the company as a whole and must not deny the holders of securities the opportunity to decide on the merits of the bid.

If a bidder has notified the BoD of a firm intention to make an offer, an announcement will be required. It does not matter if the board is supportive or not. The panel takes the view that the shareholders are the owners of the company and should decide whether to accept or not. The board can either recommend acceptance or not. But it can't dismiss it and keep it secret.

Under the City Code, if a firm intention to make an offer has been communicated to the target board, an announcement is required.

If a major launches (another) takeover bid, would they be happy to gain majority control but still have significant minority shareholders? Or would they only want 100% and take Solg as a wholly owned subsidiary?

NM and his associated companies own 20% of the shares. So unless anyone offers a price that NM is willing to accept, I don't see how they will gain 100% control. If they just took a majority stake they could obviously take control of the company but would have NM and co as a significant shareholder still.

https://www.mining.com/web/how-to-build-a-mine/

Sure this may have been posted before but it contains some pertinent lines for the Solg situation.

I'm sure articles like this are written by a bot and not a real person.

*sails

Generally I am happy with how things have progressed to date... Although as I said the other day, I think between now and mid-October, they need to try to get some good news out (albeit over time, not every single day) to try to get the SP heading up. And I think if this is going to get sold, NM would do well to get it sold sooner rather than later if he wants a strong price for it, rather than shoot for production, fail and get caught between a rock and a hard place in 2 years time if market conditions have deteriorated. Ideally I would love this to go to production and be worth ££ a share, but it seems a herculean task for Solg and the risk of failure could undo all of the potential that could be achieved if Solg was bought out a decent price (by which I mean decent for an explorer sitting on a Tier 1 asset with 3 or 4 potentially similar assets, which majors want - not the same thing as a fully functional miner).

My main gripe is probably the last placing a few months ago. I just think 21.5p seems too low and it hammered the SP down and took a good couple of months to work off with people selling for a quick return every time it got up a bit. What do you guys think? Did the 21.5p placing knock the wind out of the sales just as it was up into the mid to high 20s and could have pushed on? Or was the SP already hissing air and trending down anyway?

I feel like a lot of posters here have lost a bit of perspective on time... Not trying to have a go, but guys please remember, things like this inevitably take time. Proving up resources, obtaining licenses, drilling, surveying, all in a frontier jurisdiction that has no real history of mining, up a massive mountain that is covered by dense forest! All of this, in the middle of a global pandemic which is nowhere near over!

Big projects take time... think of all the things in the UK that go over time and over budget. TFL had a reputation for being able to deliver big infrastructure projects on time and look at Crossrail... Meant to go live end of 2018, here we are in 2020 and it's still not running. By the way Quady, that is something to consider when you think Solg can easily take this to production in 2025 just by following the DFS plans. This is not a giant Meccano kit with instructions.

Even seemingly straightforward office based projects inevitably overrun. I'm right now working on something that should have been live in Q1 2019, and no one has dropped the ball, no one has messed up, nothing has gone drastically wrong. It's just that in the doing, you uncover the unexpected delays.

Just because people here in UK or Europe can go to the shops again, does not mean that the Covid situation in Ecuador is plain sailing. It's not like there was a travel ban, then then lifted it, and everything miraculously went back to normal. Even here in UK, I have not been to the office since mid March and it's not looking like we will return this year. Things are not back to normal by a long stretch.

We are definitely in the end game now, but there is a lot going on. PFS due imminently, funding to be sorted, Covid measures to deal with (Solg has duty of care to its employees don't forget), other drilling ongoing, preparations for end of BHP standstill and takeover defences, CGP takeover offer... We can't expect good news items to be coming every single day.

I get that some people have been invested here for years, some over 10 years, but to that I would say if you've waited 10 years, the next 3-6 months isn't really that long to get through. I think in 6 months time, we will know one way or another if Solg is heading for production on its own, in a JV, or is being or has been taken out.

Latest FOMC minutes spooked markets a little because they said they don't really want to start yield curve control. But worry not, they won't admit to YCC but will continue to relentlessly print money to buy up govt debt, hammer down yields and achieve financial repression anyway, because debt levels are now so high that the only realistic option is to devalue currency and inflate them away. The Fed has meddled so much in the markets now, they are like the doctor handing out the methadone to the addicts, take it away and all hell breaks lose. Fed are well and truly riding the tiger.

Healthy correction in a bull market, I hope.

https://solgoldofferforcornerstone.com/why-accept-the-offer.php

Tabs D and E. The debt carried costs costs up to feasibility survey are paid out of 90% of Alpala proceeds. The pro rata cost of development are paid on an ongoing basis during construction.

So CGP are on the hook for a large up front bill.

FTSEFootsie - when you say "they", who do you mean exactly? Are you referring to MMs just acting in their own capacity? Or acting on behalf of someone else? Or do you mean hedge funds with DMA, algo shops etc who have some interest in keeping the price in a certain range for their own trading purposes? Or institutions acting on behalf of potential bidders e.g. RBC for NCM?

I'm not trying to dispute what you said, I'd just like to understand who you think is doing it and why. As I see that sort of theory posted quite regularly here.

The only players I can see having an interest in keeping the price capped are potential acquirers and their advisers. The rest, I doubt it because I don't see the point. Doesn't seem to me that MMs should care where the price is really, they make their money from the spread. In fact a rising price probably attracts more trading so better for them. Likewise a lot of smart money will follow momentum or trend so probably would like a rising price and a lot of dumb money will chase performance and buy what's gone up, no?

When the first offer drops at £1.25 I reckon a few of the million share guys here will be getting the Viagra out.

Hi BN.c - one thing that I was told is that in a negotiation you should always go first because whatever number you give will anchor the price discussions from there. I am not saying I agree totally with this, because in real life that may not be appropriate to the situation, but it is a school of thought.

I believe studies have shown that if you expose people to random numbers, and then ask them to value or count some arbitrary object, those exposed to higher numbers will give higher estimates than those exposed to lower. It's very hard for the brain not to assess any new number in relation to the previous number.

In terms of Solg, I would say that is why the current share price is relevant if a takeover bid comes in soon. An offer of £1 a share will seem more enticing at 4x the share price of 25p, whereas if the share price is 80p holders will probably just think £1 is only a 25% premium and therefore reject it as too low. In either case, £1 may in fact have been fair value and the previous share price was either substantially discounted or catching up to fair value.

So to me, it would be good to get some more positive news out there soon and try to get the share price rising, to raise one of the anchor points from which any takeover bids will be assessed.

Also, if there are multiple bids, the first bid to come in will become an anchor point for the subsequent bids, so we want the initial bid to be as high as possible. Again, the higher the share price, the higher the starting bid.

A few days ago people were complaining on here about SOLG building community centres etc for the local people. Personally I'd much rather they were greasing the wheels with the Ecuadorian government that way, rather than bunging brown paper envelopes and expensive watches to the ministers and judges.